Getting Started with FAIRsharing
Perhaps you've searched FAIRsharing and noticed your standard, database or policy isn’t there. Or maybe it is there, but needs some updates. Not to worry, you can add and update records easily.
Last updated
Perhaps you've searched FAIRsharing and noticed your standard, database or policy isn’t there. Or maybe it is there, but needs some updates. Not to worry, you can add and update records easily.
Last updated
You don't need an account with us to search FAIRsharing and discover resources relevant to your community. However, if you wish to contribute to FAIRsharing, for example if you have a database that you wish to register with us to improve your resource's findability, then you'll need an account.
The minimum information for an account with us is a valid email address and a username. The email address can be either for an individual or a group and records can be maintained by more than one account.
Have your role as the maintainer of FAIRsharing records automatically added each year to your ORCID profile! All you need to do is
link your ORCID account to your FAIRsharing account according to the instructions in this section,
ensure your user profile has this feature enabled, and
update your record(s) with us at least once per year, before November
For complete details, please visit Attribution for you.
You may use your ORCID or GitHub account to log into FAIRsharing. In this case, the email address used within those accounts will become the one linked to your FAIRsharing account.
You will be presented with the option to create a FAIRsharing account via ORCID or GitHub. Choose which method you would like to use to log into FAIRsharing.
If the email linked to your third-party account is new to FAIRsharing, then after authentication, a new FAIRsharing account will be created for you using the information from that account.
If the email linked to your third-party account is already associated with a FAIRsharing account, then after authentication, you will be taken directly to your existing FAIRsharing account.
Linking an ORCID account requires that your default email with ORCID is visible to FAIRsharing. You may need to modify your ORCID profile settings if your email address is not visible. To do this go to https://orcid.org/my-orcid select "emails" and set visibility to "trusted parties" or to "everyone" (see screenshot below).
Some users have noticed that the FAIRsharing site hangs after updating their ORCID settings and logging in again on the FAIRsharing site. If this happens to you, simply log out of ORCID and then refresh the FAIRsharing page.
Please note that if you've previously logged in with Twitter (no longer available) then a FAIRsharing-only account will have been created for you (see below). Click on the forgotten password link to set a password and you'll be able to use it.
You can also create an account directly with us without using authentication via social media accounts.
Choose the "Create a new account" option to create an account with us without using a social media account (this takes you to https://fairsharing.org/accounts/signup).
Fill in the details requested in the form and click "Register my new account". You will be sent an activation code from fairsharing@fairsharing.org, but sometimes this gets accidentally filtered by people's email systems into their spam folder. Please let us know if you have any questions, and we'll be happy to help you with the process.
The coloured circle in the text box where you'd enter a password gives an indication of how difficult your chosen password is for a computer to crack. We're encouraging strong passwords as there's always a potential for data, including your password, to be leaked, for example by vulnerabilities introduced by supply chain attacks (like any other application, FAIRsharing uses components which could in theory be compromised in this way).
A good password would be several unrelated words strung together; a common example of this is "CorrectHorseBatteryStaple", which comes from this cartoon. You are welcome to use symbols, upper/lower case letters, numbers etc. in your password, but longer is going to be better.
To log in, visit https://fairsharing.org/accounts/login. Your user profile contains a variety of information about you. As an example, here is the public profile for one of our curators:
There are a variety of actions you can perform on your user profile, all accessible from the "burger" menu in the top right of your profile.
Edit profile allows you to update your user details, including your organisation, email preferences and ORCID identifier. It is greyed out in the image above because the user is not yet logged in. Once logged in, you will have access to this feature for your account. Reset password allows you to reset your FAIRsharing password, even if you have forgotten it. Logout logs you out of the FAIRsharing system; please note that this will happen automatically after 24 hours if you have not logged yourself out. The other options are available only to curators.
Not sure if your database, standard or policy qualifies for addition to FAIRsharing? You can check here: https://fairsharing.org/new/
FAIRsharing maintains three, inter-related resource registries across all domains and subjects:
Standards - including reporting guidelines (e.g. the ARRIVE guidelines), terminology artefacts (ontologies, controlled vocabularies, e.g. OBI), Identifier Schema (e.g. DOI and IVOA Identifier) and Models and Formats (e.g. MINiML)
Data policies - including those from journals, journal publishers, funders and other organisations (e.g. Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines (TOP))
To allow the grouping of records across these three registries, we support the generation of Collections. We encourage Collections collated according to a specific criteria, for example, those databases and standards recommended by a funding body or journal policy.
FAIRsharing is an English language resource, but accepts submissions from non-English resources as long as they meet our minimal requirements.
We have chosen English for a number of reasons:
FAIRsharing is developed in the United Kingdom at the University of Oxford, therefore our team's working language is English.
We manually curate every record in our registries in English; in order to do so effectively, we must be able to understand the resource we are curating.
To ensure that we are providing a service that implements FAIR as much as possible (see Alignment with Community Efforts) our record metadata should be understandable by as many users as possible, and English is our language of choice to help with this.
We understand that translation can be time consuming, and the necessary skills are not always available to an academic project. If you have any questions at all about the English language requirement, please get in touch at contact@fairsharing.org and we can talk about your options. For instance, sometimes automatic translation services are suited to your particular resource; such a translation link could be added to the Support Links of your record.
Under our standard curation policies, FAIRsharing does not incorporate resource versions (e.g. different versions of a standard) into its records. This is to keep the record simple to understand, and to make it easier for the user community to see the current state of such a resource. However, in rare cases multiple versions are in use at the same time, and in such cases we will consider having different records for each version. If you're at all unsure about the best course of action for your resource, please get in touch at contact@fairsharing.org.
Please note that we do not store datasets. Please see the following points for additional clarification.
No files (excel, doc, csv, sql…), no data relating to an article publication:
If you would like to submit a database record, the database should be an organised collection of data and datasets rather than just an individual dataset.
The resource is findable.
Databases. Users can access the database via an active website and can also browse and/or search the database. In contrast, datasets are generally downloadable but not searchable, and therefore are not appropriate for FAIRsharing.
Standards and Data Policies. Users can access the resource via an active website and, where appropriate, can browse/download the specification/document and any associated documentation. The standard/data policy should be applicable to an entire community or cross-organisation consortia, and not just for a single lab or researcher.
The resource is accessible. Irrespective of licence type, the resource is available to users via a dedicated website (even if a log in or payment is required).
I have a dataset that I need to make public. Where should I store my dataset?
If you would like to find a home for your data, try browsing our complete subject hierarchy or searching our database records to find an appropriate database for your data type.
Alternatively, you could look at our collection of Generalist Repositories or browse all subject-agnostic records, which may provide you with a location to store data from a wider range of research areas. If you are submitting to a particular journal, you can also search for that journal or its publisher; if they are registered with us, then their FAIRsharing data policy record(s) may contain a list of recommended databases and/or standards.
First, check that your resource isn't already with us. You can do this through any of a number of ways: search FAIRsharing, discovering resources with our FAIRsharing Assistant.
If you can't find it in FAIRsharing, please visit https://fairsharing.org/new/ to get started on a new record. If it is in FAIRsharing, you can claim it (see next section) and then, once your claiming request is approved, begin updating the record.
Do you know your research domain well? If so, then while you're visiting us, check the completeness and coverage of your domain in FAIRsharing. Is coverage of your domain complete? If yes, then work towards enriching the metadata in existing records whose resources you maintain. Fancy updating a wider range of domain-specific resources? Perhaps the FAIRsharing Community Champions Programme is for you! Is coverage of your domain incomplete? Then start adding new records! Anyone can add records to FAIRsharing, though only the developers/owners of a resource may maintain it for the longer term.
When you click "save" after filling in details of your record, FAIRsharing will check the details to see if FAIRsharing has any similar existing records. If yours is flagged as a potential duplicate and you're sure that it isn't, click "I know what I'm doing" and then click "save" again.
FAIRsharing mints new DOIs approximately once per month in collaboration with DataCite. These DOIs describe the FAIRsharing record; they provide a persistent unique identifier for your record and its metadata in FAIRsharing. Please note that your FAIRsharing DOI is not, therefore, a DOI for the described resource itself.
In order for your record to be a candidate for a DOI, it needs to meet the following requirements:
The record must be approved by our in-house Curation team at least two weeks previous to the date of the DOI minting run
The record must NOT be a collection
The record must have at least one Subject tag
The record must have at least one Taxonomy tag
The record homepage must resolve
The record must have a ready status
If your record meets these requirements then, at the end of each monthly DOI minting run, you will receive an automated email from FAIRsharing letting you know your new FAIRsharing record DOI .
Claiming a record as either a group or an individual gives you the opportunity to make changes to the record yourself, allowing you complete control over how your resource is displayed in FAIRsharing. Maintainers are also notified if our curation team edits the record, if users ask questions, or if the record is linked from another record, such as from a journal publisher data policy.
FAIRsharing is about making your resource discoverable to a variety of users, such as journals and publishers, researchers and service providers, research and infrastructure projects and programmes, as well as curators, librarians, funders and other policy makers and data scientists. A contact is essential should they have any questions about your resource.
Maintainers are also attributed via their ORCID, and a link to their ORCID profile will appear next to their name in the records they own. Complete details of the ways in which FAIRsharing attributes maintainers is available in our Attribution for you page.
Choose "Request ownership" from the "ACTIONS" menu of the record you'd like to update. This will let FAIRsharing know that you are a developer of this resource and you'd like to help maintain this record.
Once you have requested ownership, a notification will be sent to the FAIRsharing curation team. Once we have checked that you are affiliated with the resource for the record you have claimed, we will approve your ownership and you can begin editing the record. This usually happens within a couple of working days.
There are two types of user account in FAIRsharing: personal accounts for individuals, and organisation-level accounts for those who wish to tie the FAIRsharing account to a general contact or helpdesk email address. Multiple maintainers are allowed, and encouraged, in FAIRsharing records. Individual accounts allow you to link the record to your ORCID, and also give you complete control over the account. However, if a user leaves an organisation, there can be delay involved in finding a suitable replacement. Institutional accounts allow multiple people to have access to a single account via a helpdesk or general contact email address, providing redundancy of ownership as individual members of the resource leave and join the project. However, institutional accounts cannot have ORCIDs linked to them.
Please choose whatever type of account suits your project's needs. We recommend that one institutional account is used, together with as many individual accounts as needed to provide attribution and linking with the maintainers' ORCIDs.
Once created, records in FAIRsharing should be updated whenever necessary to keep the metadata describing your resource up to date. You are using the FAIRsharing record to increase findability and interoperability of the metadata describing your resource. In turn, this helps your community find and understand the resource you develop.
We generally ask that you visit your record once per year, and spend 10-15 minutes reviewing the information there, making a short update wherever appropriate. Most commonly, our owners wish to:
update any changed URLs
add new publications
list new relationships with databases, standards, or data policies
We are here to help, and just get in touch with us at contact@fairsharing.org if you have any questions about updating your record. You can also take a look at the next sections, especially those starting at How to Update a Record, to help you with your updates.
Every year, in the month that your record was created, you'll also be sent an automated "Happy Anniversary!" email containing information about your record, and reminding you to give the record a quick check and update, where necessary.
For a non-English resource submission to be approved, a minimal amount of resource-level metadata / documentation in English describing the basics of the project and what it covers. We suggest including those attributes appropriate to your resource within the RDA Common Descriptive Attributes of Research Data Repositories document. Although this was written with repositories in mind, the overwhelming majority of the attributes listed there are appropriate for all resource types FAIRsharing accepts. Further information on how FAIRsharing aligns with this RDA output is available at .
